EX | Building analysis – the architectural substance as a historical source

The exercise in the summer semester concludes the four-semester introduction to architectural history with a practical research project. The individual research tasks lead the students directly to the historical building fabric, which is to be investigated in a multi-layered manner. The analysis of the specific building form with measurement and drawing is created in the course of the semester on a scale of 1 to 1 on the object and documents very concretely the structural condition of architecture in its appearance with all the changes due to the time.

The exercises are assigned to different topics, which are supervised by two students in groups as well as in small groups. The course of the exercise takes place in three phases: After an introduction, two lectures explain various fundamentally important elements that have always constituted architecture, such as wall and support or door and entrance, on the basis of which, in a second intensively supervised phase, the concrete building is examined both in the urban context and as an individual building. Finally, the elaborated drawing of a building detail is used to develop the thematic focus of the final oral presentation.

In this semester, the following building tasks or building types will be considered in the course of the exercise:

Group 1 – University Buildings (Dr.-Ing. Tobias Glitsch)
Group 2 – Church building in the 20th century I (Dr.-Ing. Caroline Helmenstein)
Group 3 – Church building in the 20th century II (Dr.-Ing. Caroline Helmenstein)
Group 4 – Museum buildings (Yannick Ley M. Sc. RWTH, Felix Martin M. Sc. RWTH)
Group 5 – Three-window house (Dipl.-Arch. Bruno Schindler)
Group 6 – Home: Stylistic Studies (Dipl.-Arch. Bruno Schindler)